Adrienne Rich Quotes

22 quotes

American poet, essayist and feminist (1929–2012)

“Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.”

"Poetry is, among other things, a criticism of language."

on Writing

"There is no 'the truth,' 'a truth'--truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity."

on Truth

"In a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence."

on Civil Rights

"Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don't know you know."

on Writing

"I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,and somehow, each of us will help the other live,and somewhere, each of us must help the other die."

on Life

"The friend I can trust is the one who will let me have my death.The rest are actors who want me to stay and further the plot."

on Relationships

"[Poetry] is the liquid voice that can wear through stone."

on Art

"if you unquestioningly accept one piece of the culture that despises and fears you, you are vulnerable to other pieces."

on Fear

"For now, poetry has the capacity - in its own ways and by its own means - to remind us of something we are forbidden to see."

on Art

"Silence can be a planrigorously executedthe blueprint to a lifeIt is a presenceit has a history a formDo not confuse itwith any kind of absence"

on Life

"Those who speak largely of the human condition are usually those most exempt from its oppressions - whether of sex, race, or servitude."

on Social Justice

"Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves."

on Self Awareness

"We must use what we have to invent what we desire."

on Creativity

"There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors."

on Community

"You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it."

on Writing

"Theory-the seeing of patterns, showing the forest as well as the trees"

on Critical Thinking

"Lying is done with words, and also with silence."

on Truth

"Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth."

on Art

"The moment of change is the only poem."

on Life

"A language is a map of our failures"

on Communication